RSSS 315 Fourth Week

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RSSS 315 (Fourth Week)

• Slavic Folklore Vampires and Werewolves

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Basic information

• Instructor George Gutsche
• Teaching assistants Kenny Cargill, Paula
  McCambridge
• gutscheg_at_u.arizona.edu
• D2L http//russian.arizona.edu/courses/vampires
• Office hours T 11-1230 or by appointment

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Writing Assignments

• New one will be posted on Wednesday
• More folklore accounts to consider

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Last Time

• Summary of Lastovo Island (Dalmatian Coast)
  readings
• Discussion of second and third chapters of
  Stokers Dracula
• Interpretations of Serbian film about vampires
  Leptirica

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Background for Stoker

• Biography 1847-1912
• Irish college civil servant, journalist, drama
  critic
• Personal secretary to Henry Irving (actor) in
  England
• Married, one child
• Wrote novels and short stories (18 books)
• Dracula 1897 best known

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Chapters 4-5
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Nikolai Gogol

• Slavic (Ukrainian and Russian folklore)
• Gogols story Vij (1835 1967 film)
• Gogolian humor, style

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Story Itself

• Part of Mirgorod collection (1835)
• Gogol said it was based on folk stories, beliefs
• No evidence of Vij (Viy) in folklore
• Witches, sorcerers dominate East Slavic folklore
• Connections with religion Khoma relies on folk
  beliefs and basic needs, not doctrine
• Magic circle pagan, and later Christian

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Contamination

• Poltergeist lots of noisemaking
• Succubus (very close to vampire here)
• Shape-shifting power
• Feeding on energies (sexual dimension)
• Repeated visits to victims in dreams
• Mara/mora death of victim results (usually by
  suffocation here Khoma faints and dies)

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Question are there any vampires here?

• Yes and no.or, it depends..

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Story vs. Film

• Erotic elements stronger?
• Vampire elements stronger?

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Terminoogy (Part I)

• Eastern Europe Linguistically rich area
• Slavic languages
• Hungarian
• Romanian
• Greek

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Vampire terms

• Vampir upyr, upir, upirina, upír, upiór, vepir,
  vapir (meaning vampire)
• Vukodlak (related to wolf-pelt) v?rkolak (Mac
  and Bulgarian), vrykolakas, vârcolac, kudlak (v),
  vlkolak (Slovak), wylkolek, vovkulaka, vukula
• Many cases werewolf, not vampire
• Clearly vampire in South Slavic
• Strigoi

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Terminology literary

• Exotic foreign words transliteration
  imagination (and sloppy spelling)
• Vukodlak vourdalak vurdalak verdilak
• Bo Hampton, Mark Kneece (New York, 1996)
  Verdilak (derived from Tolstoys story, dedicated
  to Mario Bava)

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Aleksei Konstantinovich Tolstoi 1817-75

• The Family of the Vurdalak (La famille du
  vourdalak)
• Late 1830s, unpublished
• Numerous film adaptations

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Mario Bavas Black Sabbath

• 1963 film American and Italian version
• Three stories one based on Tolstois story ("The
  Wurdalak)

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Types of vampires

• Folkloric supernatural characteristics, cultural
  variation
• Literary Stoker has the paradigm, but others
  helped form it in 18th and 19th centuries
• German poetry, English poetry
• Prose

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Key Work Popularized Vampire Lore

• Dom Augustin Calmet 16721757
• French biblical scholar, a Benedictine abbot at
  Nancy and Sens
• Major work Dissertations sur les Apparitions
  des Anges, des Démons et des Esprits et sur les
  revenants et vampires de Hongrie, de Bohême, de
  Moravie, et de Silésie, Paris, 1740

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Literary Vampires

• Derived from folk stories accounts of 18th
  century epidemics
• First developed in poetry (German and English),
  then prose
• Other influences late 18th Gothic fiction

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Gothic features

• Mystery, gloom, fog, night, storm
• Desolation, isolation
• Animals wolves, bats
• Distant past (unforgotten) sense of nostalgia
• Old castles, mansions, graveyards, churches
  (cobwebs, spiders)
• Mysterious sounds (howling, flapping, scratching)
• Mysterious figures, secrets, threat of violence
• Dark colors (black), blood, pale features

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German literature

• Poetry Ossenfeld, Goethe, Bürger
• Prose Tieck, Hoffmann (short stories)
• All from late 18th, early 19th centuries
• All indebted to Gothic fiction

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English literature

• Poetry Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Keats
• Prose Byron, Polidori (short fiction)

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Christabel

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Romanticism)
• Literary influence on Le Fanu
• Unfinished

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Christabel and Geraldine
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Geraldine

• Ambiguity in the text
• Vampire, witch, man?

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Drama (19th century)

• French, English
• Very popular material

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Romanticism

• First half of the 19th century-extends over all
  of the preceding
• Poetry, then short stories, novels and plays
• Exotic settings, unusual heroes
• Dreams, fantastic and supernatural phenomena

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Werewolf Cult

• English word at base
• Central and Southeast Europeans had cults, but
  different terms
• Universal changelings, animal-human relations

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Characteristics of East European Werewolves

• Changelings rusalki, samovily
• Animal cults link with mysteries of universe
• Cannibalism, eating flesh, drinking blood

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Pre-historic times (all before 9th AD)

• ritual wearing of wolf pelts all before 9th AD

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Later

• Stories of vukodlaks (and related forms) chasing
  clouds, devouring sun and moon 13th 16th
  centuries
• Related terms (utilizing wolf as root) refer to
  vampires in South and Central Europe
• E.g., Dark Wolf (2003) is titled Vukodlak in
  Czech
• Linguistic changes in different areas many
  similar terms for vampires and werewolves in
  Eastern Europe, the Balkans (different language
  groups)

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Vseslav of Polotsk Early Historical Werewolf?

• Belarusian Prince, 1030-1101
• Great Grand-Grandson of Vladimir
• Werewolf-sorcerer reputation (Vseslav the
  Magician-Charodei)
• Could turn to a grey wolf, a clear falcon or a
  deer with gold horns

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Igor Tale

• In the seventh age of Troian, Vseslav cast lots
  for a girl,         a maiden he desired for
  himself.Sustained by cunning, he mounted a horse
  and galloped to Kiev,         touched the shaft
  of his spear on the gold Kievan throne.He leapt
  away from them at Belgorod        like a wild
  beast at midnight wrapped in a blue mist. Three
  times he grasped good fortune, opened the gates
  of Novgorod,        smashed the glory of
  Iaroslav, and as a wolf leapt to the Nemiga. He
  blew clean the threshing floor.On the Nemiga
  sheaves are spread like heads         they
  thresh them with damask flails.On the threshing
  floor they lay down life and winnow souls from
  bodies. The Nemiga's bloody banks were sown with
  evil,        sown with the bones of the sons of
  Rus.Prince Vseslav judged the people he ruled
  the cities for the princes,         but at night
  he roamed as a wolf.From Kiev, before the cock's
  crow, he could lope to Tmutorokan         as a
  wolf he crossed the path of great Horus.They
  rang the bells for him at matins, early at St.
  Sophia, in Polotsk         he heard the sound
  in Kiev.And though his wizard's soul journeyed
  in another body,         still he often suffered
  misfortune.Of him the wizard Boian first spoke
  well-devised words        "Neither the skillful
  one nor the craftiest creature,        not even
  the cleverest bird, will escape the Judgment of
  God." 0 groan, Russian land, recalling the first
  time and the first princes.

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Our Readings

• Peter Stubbe (Peter Stumpf), 1525-89
• Setting near Cologne Germany
• 1590 account
• Werewolfs Daughter (Slovakia)
• Difficult to date
• Clearly a folk tale
• Many more tales, especially from France

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Whats the Message Here?

• Werewolves are vicious, bloodthirsty, lust driven
• Some change form with magic devices
• They can be destroyed, especially when they are
  not in wolf form.